


A Lady Never Flinches

by MissBrainProblems



Category: Mythgard
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:55:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21743347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissBrainProblems/pseuds/MissBrainProblems
Summary: After testing positive for magic affinity, Lenka Tikhonovna is sent to one of the Ved'ma's witch academies for training and indoctrination. In spite of the horror stories that she had heard about Ved'ma training, her induction ceremony is far more than she could have ever imagined.Inspired by lore snippets from some of the Ved'ma cards.





	A Lady Never Flinches

Lenka looked nervously around the assembly room, desperate for anything to examine that she might draw her thoughts away from the sheer anxiety and terror that she felt standing there in the middle of a Ved'ma training academy. There was, of course, the stern-faced woman that stood at the end of the row of young girls that she was standing in formation with; "stern-faced woman" wasn't a very defining trait, however, given that _every_ Ved'ma officer in the room was "stern-faced". Regardless, the woman that was monitoring Lenka's row of half a dozen new cadets watched them all with the eyes of a hawk; at one point, the officer stepped into the formation and fixed the hair of the girl to the left of Lenka, reprimanding the cadet about the fact that their braids were supposed to be on their _left_ , and not on their right.

At that thought, Lenka's hand went up to where her own, brown-colored braid of hair was sitting on her left shoulder. Part of the intake process involved Ved'ma officers using automagic to cut their hair down to an acceptable length - Lenka's had been down to her waist before, but it now measured down to just below her neck - before forming it into a braid that, as the woman staring down Lenka had pointed out, was supposed to _always_ be on their left side, at least when they were lined up like how they were in the assembly room. Uniformity, the officers, was the first step in training them to be proper Ved'ma soldiers. It wasn't just their hair, of course. Having been forewarned by some neighbors whose daughter had previously gone into the academy, Lenka had worn only the most cheap of her clothes. Other girls, apparently, were not as informed, and they complained loudly about their fine dresses and garments being violently torn off of them before being given a recruit's uniform; a Ved'ma witch casting a fear enchantment quieted them down rather quickly, though.

Of course, it wasn't as if the Ved'ma needed to use any magic to instill terror into the young girls that found themselves at that academy. Barely out of secondary school, tested at their graduation, "congratulated" on having tested positive for magical aptitude, and then mandated to appear at their local Automagic Center on the next Monday, only a few days to say goodbye to their friends and families before the Ved'ma dragged them off; nobody was willing to defy the will of the Ved'ma, of course, and any who did were quickly made examples of to dissuade any other possible dissenters. Lenka supposed, at least, that she was "luckier" than some of the boys at her school who had tested as compatible for the Volkov program; she knew, of course, that training as Ved'ma wasn't all sunshine and roses, but she had heard even worse things about what Volkov trainees were forced to go through.

Such thoughts were, of course, small consolation, both to Lenka and to the girl at her left; after having been yelled at by the officer, the black-haired cadet seemed practically on the verge of tears. Given that other recruits were talking quietly amongst themselves and given that whatever event they had gathered for hadn't started by that point, Lenka opted to start up a whispered conversation with the girl in some small attempt to comfort her; it wasn't as if Lenka herself was totally composed, but she hoped that helping somebody else out might improve her own emotional situation. "My name's Lenka. What's your name?" It was a simple greeting, accompanied by a simple smile, but Lenka hoped that it would work well enough.

The girl next to her, at least, seemed to accept it; with a sniff and a small, nervous smile, the black-haired cadet nodded and gave her response. "My name's Olya. Nice to, erm. Nice to meet you, Lenka." The girl's eyes still quivered slightly, but even a few words from Lenka seemed to have stopped the flood of tears that had threatened to overflow just a few seconds ago.

"Kind of scary, isn't it? All of this, I mean." Lenka gave a small motion with her hand to gesture around at the room, the rows of cadets, and the officers standing guard nearby; she wasn't about to pretend to be fearless, and she hoped that by putting her own fright on display, Olya might feel less alone in her emotions.

With a nod, Olya spoke up again in a voice full of anxiety. "Yeah, it, uhm..." One of the girl's hands went up to its opposite arm, squeezing down nervously as Olya looked down to the floor. "I think this is probably the most scared that I've ever been in my entire life. It's, uhm. Really... _Really_ scary."

Giving as comforting of a smile as she could manage, Lenka reached one of her hands out to Olya's, gently grabbing onto it and softly squeezing it, doing her best to calm her fellow cadet down. "Yeah. I think it's probably the same for me. But I think we can get through this, yeah? I think we can all get through this." In response to Lenka's words, Olya gave another weak, anxious smile, before offering as confident of a nod as she could manage.

"Atten- _shun!_ " Every officer in the room called out at once, prompting a good portion of the recruits to nearly jump out of their skin. As Lenka hurriedly composed herself into what she hoped was proper formation, a witch at the front of the gathering of cadets used automagic to project herself tall enough that everyone in the room could see and hear her; Lenka had only a few seconds to notice the woman's cybernetic right arm and eye before the witch began speaking in a loud, amplified voice. "Repeat after me: 'The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches.'" The first time the sentence was echoed, the vast majority of the recruits spoke it slowly, without any real surety to their words; in response, the witch's brows furrowed, and she shouted out, loud enough to make Lenka's ears ring. "Again! Properly this time! 'The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches!'" After a second of recovery time, the cadets managed to echo the witch's words with more enthusiasm and vigor, loud enough to match the woman's magically enhanced voice.

"Better, but still not good enough! Again! 'The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches!'" A third time the recruits repeated the witch's words, and then a fourth, and then a fifth... And then a girl somewhere else in the assembly screamed, followed by several other shouts of concern. As Lenka turned to look, her eyes were immediately drawn to the source of the panic: Roots, hundreds of them, apparently one for each of the recruits, moving down from the ceiling and toward the girls. As Ved'ma officers began restoring order to the ranks - physically restraining cadets, where necessary - the witch up front continued shouting her mantra. "The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches! The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches! The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches!" As Olya next to her began to hyperventilate, Lenka squeezed down on her hand again, harder that time, doing her best to ground the other cadet, even as she heard a root approach from behind her head.

And then, the pain. So, so much pain. More pain than anything Lenka had ever felt in her entire life, possibly more pain than Lenka had cumulatively felt over her eighteen years on that Earth. It hurt in ways that Lenka didn't even know were possible, caused her pain that extended beyond just her body but into parts of her that she didn't even know existed up until that point. It felt like something was being taken out of her, something precious, something necessary, only to be replaced by something else that just left her feeling _empty_ , even as it filled up the hole that had been left behind in that new part of her. Through the blinding, searing pain, Lenka managed to idly note that her body was still standing; indeed, one might say that - in spite of the sheer torment and agony that the young girl was undergoing - her body seemed frozen, as perfectly still and placid as a calm, unmoving lake.

Once the pain stopped, though - and once Lenka heard the root behind her begin to retreat into the ceiling - she found herself free to collapse onto the ground, panting heavily as she desperately tried to recover herself. As the roots that had attached to nearby girls began to detach from the other cadets, they, too, opted to fall to the floor, moans of latent agony echoing through the room as the Ved'ma officers stood by and watched. As Lenka's eyes rolled around aimlessly, they settled for a second on the girl who had been standing to the right of her when they had been arrayed into their rows: a blonde girl, whose root had long since detached, but who was still standing up tall, firm, and strong, even as her body trembled from what pain was left over from whatever the roots had done to them. As the blonde girl muttered the witch's mantra to herself over and over again in an attempt to keep herself grounded, Lenka could only help but to feel immensely impressed at her fellow cadet's endurance and willpower.

Olya, as Lenka had expected, was barely conscious as Lenka turned to check on the other recruit. "Olya. Hey, Olya. Hang in there." Lenka shook at the other girl's shoulder, doing her best to try to wake Olya from whatever stupor the torture from the roots had sent the recruit into. "Olya, hey. It's over. The roots are gone." Every word she spoke drained more of the meager energy that Lenka had left over following her own experience with the roots, but she just wouldn't feel right leaving the other girl there on the floor.

"This is a necessary part of tapping into the latent magical potential that all of you possess." The witch at the front of the assembly continued speaking, having barely given the cadets any time to compose themselves. "All of the officers you see here underwent that process as well. Every Ved'ma witch you've ever seen over the course of your entire lives have undergone that process. And thus, so will you." Will? Future-tense? To say that Lenka's heart rate ticked up at that moment would have been an understatement. "Every morning, before breakfast, and every evening, before dinner, you will undergo a root tapping like what you just experienced." A few screams of terror, moans of despair, and groans of dismay let themselves be heard elsewhere in the crowd. "It will hurt. You will get used to it. You will endure it. For the roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches."

As recruits continued to roll around in pain and exhaustion, the witch's projection narrowed its eyes and shouted louder. "Repeat! 'The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches!'" The voices of the cadets were weak, quiet, barely any of the girls capable of properly following the woman's orders. "The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches!" Recruits desperately attempted to repeat her words - the blonde girl standing near Lenka being one of the few who managed to call back at an appropriate volume - and Ved'ma officers began to enter the ranks, pulling girls up onto their feet whether they liked it or not. "The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches!"

The woman that had previously reprimanded Olya on her hair then yanked the cadet up, prompting a quiet cry of pain from the black-haired girl in the process. "Hey! You're hurting her!" Even as the words left Lenka's mouth, she immediately regretted them, knowing what sort of fate she had just sealed for herself.

The officer _glared_ at Lenka, glared at the girl harder and more violently than she had ever been glared at before. "Would you like to repeat that, Ryadovóy Tikhonova?" It was the first time that Lenka had been addressed by her new military rank, and it was a half reprimand and half a thinly veiled threat. As Lenka stood herself up on trembling legs, she swallowed hard past a lump in her throat, and shook her head in fear as the officer stared with all the authority of the Ved'ma behind her. "I did not think so. Handle her." The woman practically threw the still traumatized Olya into Lenka's arms, the latter girl barely managing to catch her fellow cadet and keep both of them on their feat; without any further ceremony, the officer continued into their ranks, forcing other recruits to stand up, uncaring of what sort of state the girls might have been in.

Once the majority of the other cadets were back into proper formation - albeit still in various states of psychological disrepair and semi-consciousness - the witch at the front of the crowd continued speaking, all business as usual. "Given the time, that will be your before-dinner session for tonight. We will show you to the cafeteria, where you _will_ eat your meal. As cadets, it is part of your duty to keep your body well-fed, healthy, and of use to the Ved'ma. We _will_ take measures in regards to any cadets that refuse meals." The recruits tensed up, but nobody spoke up; more than likely, nobody wanted to know what those "measures" that the witch mentioned even were. "After dinner, we will distribute the rest of your supplies and equipment, including a diary for each of you. While we cannot force you to keep the diary, studies have shown that doing so increases psychological health and contentment amongst recruits. That being the case, it is highly recommend that you keep a diary, unless you want your training to be any more stressful for you than necessary." Lenka scoffed quietly enough that the officer couldn't hear. What was she even supposed to keep a diary on? How much she was fucking tortured by whatever those roots were?

"You will be shown to your dorms, given three hours of free time, and then you will sleep. In the morning, you will undergo another session with the roots." Olya to her left squeezed down on Lenka's hand, while the blonde girl to Lenka's right balled her hands into fists and clenched down. "After that, you will have breakfast, and then we will begin your training in earnest. You _will_ wake up at six o'clock sharp." A few dismayed mutterings came from some of the nearby girls. "We have automagic in place to ensure that no sleep can occur between the hours of six in the morning and eight at night within this facility. Any attempts to do so will be met with both failure and disciplinary action." The witch paused for a few moments, apparently to give time for her words to sink in; they appeared to have had the intended effect, as nearby cadets seemed just a tad more frightened than before. "That will be all for now. Your instructors will explain further as topics arise. Go, and remember your mantra. 'The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches.'"

"The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches." As Lenka echoed the witch's words along with the rest of the cadets, all that she could think of was the sheer and utter feeling of emptiness that resounded throughout a previously unknown part of who she was. At the witch's urging, the girls repeated their mantra again, Lenka's jaw clenching even as she followed step. "The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches." She had lived under the thumb of the Ved'ma regime for nearly two decades. She knew, in so many ways, how they operated. She knew that they saw people as tools, as objects, as things to be used for the Ved'ma's goals, in support of the Ved'ma government. And Lenka knew, of course, that she herself would end up as just another tool for the Ved'ma to use, once she entered their academy. But that didn't mean that she had to like it. As the recruits once more spoke up in unison, Lenka grit her teeth, and practically growled out the words. "The roots help us grow, and a lady never flinches." Surving the Ved'ma training regimen was already looking to be an uphill battle, but maybe, just _maybe_ , there was something in that ridiculous mantra that Lenka could use to get through the following weeks. Looking down at the floor and clenching her fists, Lenka whispered the words again, that time to herself, and for her own sake: "A lady _never_ flinches."


End file.
